The Best Wishes series (Japanese: ポケットモンスターベストウイッシュPocket Monsters Best Wishes!) is the fourth series of the Pokémon anime, following after the Diamond & Pearl series, and based on the events of the Generation V games. It began airing in Japan on September 23, 2010 and began airing in the United States on February 12, 2011.

As with both the Advanced Generation and Diamond and Pearl series before it, the Best Wishes series begins with only Ash Ketchum, headed off to a new region with his Pikachu. Much like before, his previous female companion, Dawn, has left the series. Instead, Ash now travels through Unova with a girl by the name of Iris. Unlike the previous three series, with the exception of the Orange Archipelago saga, Brock does not join him in his journey in Unova. Instead, Ash now travels with one of the first Gym Leaders of Unova, Cilan.

As before, Ash receives a change of clothes. For the first time in the entire show, the Team Rocket trio also receive a change of clothes, but later change back to their original outfits. Additionally, the Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny in Unova are designed differently than those of the regions visited by Ash before. Best Wishes is also notable for Jessie, James and Meowth not being present in all episodes outside of clip shows and the first episode.

It is currently unknown how many seasons the series will be divided into for audiences outside of Japan.

Trivia

The Best Wishes series is the first series since the original series to have no in-game playable characters present in Ash's group.

It is likely that the Best Wishes title is intentionally comprised of words beginning with B and W as an allusion to its counterpart games, Black and White.

In the Japanese title, the katakana transcription of the English word "Wishes" (ウイッシュ) contains the Japanese name of the region the games and anime series take place in, Isshu (イッシュ).

For several weeks, previews of the Best Wishes series's early episodes explicitly excluded Ash Ketchum, with the hosts of Pokémon Sunday commenting on his absence. Ash did not appear on a pre-release poster, as well. This was likely to hide his redesign for greater surprise.

Much like the original series, Ash's female companion debuts in the first episode of the series, but she is not introduced in full until the second, and Ash meets his male traveling companion in the fifth episode, when he leaves behind his Gym Leader duties to travel with Ash. Both of Ash's traveling companions are also Gym Leaders in Pokémon Black and White.

The first few episodes of this series share similar elements to the first few episodes of the original series, while there are many allusions to the original series present.

Best Wishes is the first anime series that did not premiere on the same day its respective games were released since the original series.

Ash catches the Unova starter Pokémon in reverse Pokédex order, obtaining Oshawott, then Tepig, and finally Snivy. All previous times he has caught multiple starter Pokémon he has caught the Grass-type among them first, following up with the Fire-type in all regions but Hoenn, and finally catching the Water-type among the group in Kanto and Johto only.

With the beginning of this series, many attacks have had their visual appearances changed (for instance, Fire-type attacks and Stone Edge are now rendered in CGI, while physicalSteel-type attacks make the corresponding body part steel-colored rather than white). Hyper Beam has also been changed considerably, to match how it looks in the games.

In BW061, Dare da? returned after an absence of 444 episodes. The dub equivalent, Who's That Pokémon? had already returned as of BW001.